Vexations may be petty, but they are vexations still.

The thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear.

The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe.

Laws gain their authority from actual possession and custom: it is perilous to go back to their origins; laws, like our rivers, get greater and nobler as they roll along: follow them back upstream to their sources and all you find is a tiny spring, hardly recognizable; as time goes by it swells with pride and grows in strength.

If virtue cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from her that she derives her reputation and honor?

It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one.

Each person calls barbarism whatever is not his or her own practice.... We may call Cannibals barbarians, in respect to the rulesof reason, but not in respect to ourselves, who surpass them in every kind of barbarity.